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Some stories send me down a rabbit hole, and after reading The Devil's Knot, I have been researching the West Memphis Three again. I rewatched the documentary made by HBO, Paradise Lost - The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.
It does a great job of presenting both sides of the cases and not showing bias. It allows you to draw your own conclusion. It definitely makes you think more about whether or not the prosecutors "got it right". It also makes you think about evidence, or lack thereof, and how someone's appearance can send the wrong message.
In my opinion, the documentary is very raw and edited very well. I think that West Memphis was excited to have a film crew, and some people seemed to revel in the possibility of 15 minutes of fame. Since The Devil's Knot was so freshly in my mind (and all the biased detail that it included), I can see how some moments that were kept in the documentary where Damien and Jason seem to be joking around during court recesses might make someone believe they are guilty. But knowing what I know, I see it as nervous behavior. They had no idea what was going on, the severity of the situation they were facing, and no one to "guide" them during the filming to say "make sure you don't appear" this way or that way by comments that you make. They were very raw and unfiltered. But I think this also shows their maturity level. They were just teenagers. Damien made a joking comment about Capital Murder while he was holding his son. I'm sure some viewers took that as guilty and that he didn't care. But I believe that he was just being a kid, nervously making a joke to lighten his situation; plus, he knew he didn't do it, so he was confident that he was going to be found innocent. I also think that he was probably annoyed and bothered by how the media was painting a negative, dark picture of him as a satanist. So, as a young, naive, immature individual, he gave the media what they wanted. After all, he knew he was innocent and this whole thing was stupid to begin with. I think Jason had some of the same feelings/thoughts. He made a couple of bad-natured jokes that could be misconstrued, but all I see there is a scared, frightened, young boy, who really had no idea of the magnitude of the allegations against him.
John Mark Byers was portrayed as crazy and a wild card in this documentary. It easily makes you suspicious of his story and the knife he gifted to HBO. It's funny that when he was on the stand, his personality and demeanor were so incredibly opposite to how he was in the rest of the documentary. I think he must have been on a shitload of Xanax or something. He was definitely drugged up so that he would be more subdued for questioning.
There were a couple of instances in the court room where it seemed that the lawyers, law enforcement, and judge were excited to be on camera with a real film crew. Like this was the most exciting thing that had ever come to West Memphis and they were trying to play it cool. I wonder if attitudes and outcomes would have been different if there was no film crew during the trials. What do you think?
I'll dive into some more West Memphis Three later on, since I'm down this rabbit hole already. What other recommendations do you have on stories/shows about them?
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